Banner pages have long been associated with print jobs in shared print environments. A banner page is, typically, a printed sheet that separates one print job output from another. For example, a banner page may include the name or some other uniquely identifying feature of the user that submitted the print job, often in an eye-catching format, so that the user can easily find and separate his/her print job from the other jobs in the printer's output tray.
Traditionally, the use of banner pages has been relatively narrow in scope and purpose, reflecting the capabilities and intended use of the shared printers. For example, one banner page has typically been output on top of (or in association with) each print job submitted. If multiple copies of a particular job are requested, then multiple banner pages may also be produced. Essentially, the only option available has been whether to print the banner page with the job, or not. And, often, even that option is not adjustable by the user because it is pre-designed at the shared print server that spools the print job to the printer.
However, as technology has enabled more sophisticated printers, offering greater printing capabilities and document finishing options, the need for variations on managing the traditional banner page in connection with those print jobs has also increased. For example, certain higher end shareable printers now enable enhanced printing, known as multiple original copying (MOPYing), whereby a single print job is sent once to the printer yet printed multiple times and output in proper order as multiple copies of a "single" job. Additionally, extensive finishing operations, such as collation, binding, stapling and punching are now offered. Furthermore, some printers provide multi-resolution print capability so that a job may be printed in one of a selection of print resolution modes. In sum, these printers provide advanced shared printing, "copying", and selective document finishing functionality all in one.
To this regard, the options for using banner pages has not kept up with the sophisticated options of these printers. For example, if a single MOPY job is submitted with a request for a banner page, and the MOPY job is designated to produce three collated sets of one document, then each set would include a banner page for a total of three banner pages. Additionally, if each set is stapled, then each banner page would also be stapled to its respective document set. In this example, the output of three banner pages for the single MOPY job not only increases total print throughput time, but is resource wasteful and may not be desired by the user or necessary for identifying the single MOPY job. In other words, a single banner page for the single MOPY job may suffice but is not available. Moreover, the stapling of each banner page to each set is a further inconvenience to the user who usually discards the banner page. In this scenario, it may be more convenient to have the collated sets stapled, but not the banner page. Rather, the banner page could simply be placed unattached adjacent to the first (or last, depending on print output order) stapled document set. Additionally, in a multi-resolution capable printer, it would be beneficial if the banner page could be printed at a lower resolution to increase overall printer processing throughput in the event a subsequent print job is also to be printed at the lower resolution.
However, conventionally, it has not been easy to identify a banner page in a print job data stream that has been input to a printer from a host. As such, none of these improved banner page features are available in today's shared printer environments. This is due, in part, because in modern network printing environments the network printer may receive print data streams from multiple hosts, each of which may treat banner pages differently. Additionally, neither the conventional printer description language (PDL) commands nor the printer job language commands (PJL) explicitly define or identify a banner page as a banner page. When a print job is submitted to a shared printer, whether it is submitted using a PDL such as PCL or PostScript, or whether it is submitted as a raster image such as in a Sleek environment, the print job is typically enveloped with PJL commands for further controlling and defining the printing environment (or at least a default printing environment). If the host (whether it be a local host directly connected to a printer, or a print server host that has received the print job from a remote host) from which the print job is submitted is configured to attach a banner page to the print job (the banner page usually being defined with PDL commands), then in addition to enveloping the originally submitted print job with PJL commands, the banner page is also enveloped in PJL commands. Then both the banner page and the print job are entirely and jointly enveloped in outer PJL commands to effectuate a "single" PJL envelope defining a "single" print job. Within the "single" outer PJL envelope that defines the "single" print job are the sub-nested PJL command envelopes that separate and define the banner page (PDL commands) from the actual document print job (PDL commands). However, again, neither the PDL commands nor the PJL commands nor the enveloping scheme provide any specific mechanism for notifying the printer that a banner page is included. The printer sees an interpretable print job data stream, including, for example, PDL commands enveloped in PJL commands, but nothing that explicitly says "these PDL commands define a banner page" or "this PJL envelope identifies a banner page".
Thus, the difficulty of identifying a banner page associated with a print job data stream, in addition to the increasingly sophisticated print options being made available on newer shared printers, has notably left banner page management options lacking in today's printing environments.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide improved banner page management options, especially for shared and sophisticated printing environments.